Roundabout
by Kaguya 2.0
Summary: Blues's power core is in its last days, but a lifetime of broken trust has left him unwilling to go to his own creator for help. In a last-ditch effort to save his life, Dr. Light has enlisted the help of an unlikely "engineer": 13-year-old Kalinka Cossack. For WA's "Broken Object" Challenge.
1. Mikhail

"So, we've caught you at last," said Mikhail.

The body stretched out on his daughter's bed, palms up, eyes gently closed, said nothing. A cold breeze blowing in through the open window lifted a few strands of black hair from his forehead, but other than that Blues was still. As still as death. Not breathing. Even his artificial pulse had stopped.

Good. Phase One complete.

Meanwhile, the sleeping human girl squeezed up against the wall beside him shifted and mumbled. Mikhail wasn't nearly as happy to see that.

"Um..."

He glanced up at the clock on the wall and growled. 2:23 a.m. This meant that, right under his nose, Kalinka had spent nearly half the night snuggled up to this... _boy._

But on the other hand Blues wasn't a _real_ boy, and in shutdown mode, limp and inert, with his plasma cannon tucked deep away inside a smooth, flesh-colored, human left hand, he looked kind of like... like a large stuffed animal. Nothing to worry about, right?

...That is, a large, boy-shaped, _anatomically-correct_ stuffed animal.

 _That's it._ Mikhail took a deep breath _. You, my silicon-based fri_ _end, are_ _going downstairs to the lab where you belong._ He lifted a tentative hand, hesitated, then pulled it back. He growled again.

Because Kalinka would pitch a fit if he tried to move Blues. _Blues hates labs_ , _Papa,_ she'd say. _I promised him I'd keep him here the whole time_. To her, the solemnity of that promise outweighed the fact that Blues would never know he'd been moved. For reasons Mikhail couldn't grasp, Blues felt safe here among Kalinka's snow globes and nail polish collection and Botticelli posters and other regalia of tender thirteen-year-old girlhood. And that was enough cause for Kalinka to insist that the procedure to replace his failing power core was going to be done _here_.

Despite how much easier it would be for Light to do it _there_.

Scratching his beard, he narrowed his eyes at her. "If only you could be more... _reasonable_."

Why did it have to be her _bedroom_? The place where she slept? Especially since Blues, especially _now_ , bare-faced and stripped of all his armor, looked exactly like a thirteen-year-old _boy?_ With feet culminating in individual, human-looking toes. A pinkish candor in his cheeks. Black hair messy and furrowed... as though someone's fingers had not long ago been running through it.

 _Kalinka's_ fingers.

Mikhail cleared his throat.

"Kalinka."

Kalinka stirred, turned in his direction, and inhaled one of those deep, windy breaths of the impenetrably asleep. And as she turned Mikhail saw, for the first time, two white trails of salt streaking out from the corners of her pink-lidded eyes.

Mikhail let out an exasperated sigh. Tonight, he feared, all the reason and common sense he could muster would be no match for his daughter and her tender heart.

Because Blues was dying again. This time, probably for good. The patch-up Wily had once put in to stabilize his power core, a calculated piece of planned obsolescence, had delayed the end for a while. But in recent weeks Blues had begun to have trouble holding a charge, and soon afterward an onslaught of crippling pain, stuttered speech, tics in his face and fingers, and vanished memories had followed: portents that the end was finally, unequivocally, here. All of which Kalinka had related to her father piece by piece between panicked sobs.

"Papa, what are we going to do?" she had asked.

"Tell Light, of course," he'd said.

Light had been ready for this for years. He'd already built a replacement core for Blues, and had long ago worked out how to safely redirect his source code and memory bank during the installation. He'd run multiple successful simulations of the procedure. He was absolutely certain Blues's mind, delicate thing though it was, would emerge intact.

The only problem had been getting Blues to go through with it. And although Kalinka had tried her best to persuade him, Blues _hadn't_ agreed to go through with it—not, that is, if it meant letting _Light_ replace his core.

Despite the fact that _Light_ was the only person on earth who could.

 _Stubborn. Illogical_. Mikhail crossed his arms. _Selfish_. Yes, that was it. Blues was _selfish_. He'd rather die than make peace with Light. _Idiot_. Didn't he understand how much his death would hurt Kalinka?

By almost allowing himself to die, Blues had been a _selfish idiot_.

And then most recently Light, in a fit of eleventh-hour desperation, had unveiled a Plan B which he had called "The White Lie."

The essence of "The White Lie" was: Kalinka would tell Blues that _she_ would be the one to replace his power core. And once he was unconscious, they would call Light over.

And then Light would save Blues's life whether he liked it or not.

Gleaming on Kalinka's desk was the silvery fist-sized device, freshly assembled by 3-D printer according to Light's exact specifications, destined to become Blues's new core. Beside it was a copy of the installation schematics opened to a page near the middle, scrawled over in the margins with Light's handwritten notes. The old professor had tried, as convincingly as possible, to translate his instructions into layman's terms for her. Of course, Kalinka didn't have the first clue what to do with them.

But the point was that tonight, when Blues had teleported into her room for another one of his visits, she had announced to him that she did. And somehow, flying in the face of logic, it seemed he had lain down obediently on the bed, closed his eyes, and allowed her to shut him down.

...After which she was _supposed_ to have woken her father, not climbed into the bed with him and dozed off.

What the _hell_?

Nevermind, nevermind...

Blues's shirt and trousers were tidy, and his shades had been folded with care and placed on Kalinka's bedside table. His yellow scarf was rolled up and wedged neatly under one arm. Eyebrows slightly raised, mouth slightly open, his face was locked in a look of hopeful expectation. There was no sign of a struggle.

By God, "The White Lie" had actually worked.

But _why?_ Blues knew Kalinka had flunked algebra last spring, didn't he?

 _Didn't he?_

And just then, as Mikhail struggled to wrap his mind around that contradiction, Kalinka flung her arm around Blues's chest, nuzzled into his neck, and let out a long, low moan.

 _Oh, for God's sake._

Okay. Here was what he'd do. He'd pry Blues out of the bed, slowly, silently, so that Kalinka wouldn't notice. He'd carry him downstairs to the lab, like he'd wanted to do all along, and deposit him on one of the stainless steel tables. _That_ would be appropriate. And when Kalinka came storming down the stairs the next morning demanding to know where Blues was, he would explain to her that there were _rules_ in this household, and that among them was the rule that she was not to sleep next to any boys, _or_ androids that looked like boys. Even if they were her closest friends. Even if they were dying.

Feeling strong, and absolutely sure of the rightness of his convictions, like a good father ought, he leaned forward and reached out with open hands. And then his hands came down and clasped themselves around Blues's chest, which was as cold as ice.

Startled by that cold, he shuddered and drew back. And then, like lightning strikes, a series of images flashed fully-formed across his mind's eye: of Kalinka shutting Blues down, feeling him gradually go cold, beholding him lying there still and unresponsive—exactly the way he would look and feel if he were dead—and then crying until her eyes were sore.

Of _course_ she hadn't come to wake Mikhail up: the last thing she'd wanted then was the presence of her logical and hard-headed father who'd probably tell her that her crying was _unreasonable._ And so, exhausted, she had lain down and let sleep overtake her beside Blues who, despite being a _selfish idiot_ , and looking too much like a boy, had rescued her from Wily when she was a little girl and ever since had been her true and steady friend.

Mikhail, astonished, felt his anger suddenly melt away.

He looked; there at Blues's side was his old scratched and dented generator, still tethered to the input in his umbilicus by a thermoplastic-sheathed cable. Too frightened these last few days to disconnect it, he had taken to carrying it in front of him like a ball and chain.

And _there_ , lying forlorn in the middle of the floor, was Blues's red and white shield. It seemed to have been dropped, or even thrown down in frustration, as if its owner had at last conceded that it couldn't protect him anymore.

Mikhail had to admit it was a pitiful sight.

He let out a long sigh. Fine. He'd allow an exception in _this_ case. For now, Blues could stay where he was.

He _was_ dying, after all. And tonight, he didn't look like a machine, or a weapon, or the ex-commander of Wily's army of robots, or a hero. He looked only like a boy. A rather small one. Just a boy with messy black hair and an admittedly kind-looking face. A boy who was about to be given a second chance.

Who deserved one.

"You'd better pull through, you bastard," Mikhail said.

He went to Kalinka's closet, took out a blanket, and tucked Kalinka into it. And then, almost unable to believe what he was doing, he went back to the closet, took out a second blanket, and draped it over Blues. Somehow, it seemed like the right thing to do. Blues couldn't feel cold now, but it was the _principle_ of the thing that mattered.

And tonight, anyway, considering the circumstances under which Mikhail had found him, Blues was lucky, _very_ lucky, that he wasn't a _real_ boy.

Mikhail squinted down at his work. Cocooned in their individual pods, with only their heads sticking out, the two sleepers at last seemed to be separated by a chaste and respectable distance.

 _Seemed._

Still unsatisfied, he wedged a pillow between their lower halves, but even that wasn't enough to put his mind completely at ease. With another sigh, he picked up Kalinka's desk chair, set it down beside the bed, crossed his arms, and settled in for a long vigil.

Despite a few minor... _deviations_ from the original plan, Phase One was complete. Success. Time for Phase Two: get Light's butt over here.

"Call Thomas Light," he mumbled to the phone in his pocket, and a moment later the dial tone purred softly.

Light picked up within seconds. "Cossack," he said with a gasp. "Is Blues?..."

"Yes, we've caught him." He felt his eyes go misty in spite of himself. "Now, please tell me again this operation is going to work."


	2. Kalinka

That morning last spring, when she saw the blood in her sheets, she realized her mother would never know about it, and cried.

No. She cried because, even if her mother _could_ know, she probably wouldn't care. She'd be too busy getting drunk to care.

That morning, the first morning of her first period, was one of the worst mornings of Kalinka's life. Mostly because of thinking about Mother.

She made do with a wad of tissue and a fresh pair of undies. Then she balled up her stained sheets and the plaid pyjama bottoms and waited two hours in her room to tell Papa. She only told him after he came up to knock on her door because he was worried she was sick.

It sucked so much telling Papa. What sucked about it most of all was that she knew Papa was thinking about Mother too. They were _both_ thinking about Mother, but neither of them could say it out loud.

Awkward.

To be specific, Papa was thinking about how he wished Mother was around to explain all this stuff to Kalinka, which then led to him thinking about what a horrible father he was for not being able to keep Mother around. He never told Kalinka that, but she knew. She hated when Papa thought badly of himself.

What a shitty freaking day.

But the day when she was nine and Mother called had been way worse.

"Oh, my God... Kalinka..." said a woman's voice, when Kalinka had picked up the line on the netscreen. "It's you, isn't it?... I didn't think you'd be the one to answer… Kalinka, my baby..."

"Um, who _are_ you?" Kalinka said.

"I'm your _mother_ , of course," the voice said.

"No, you're not," said Kalinka. "My mother died in a plane crash five years ago."

"Mikhail told you _that_? No, that's not true. You see..."

Papa was standing in the doorway, white as a sheet.

"Kalinka, who is that?"

"Mikhail… I'm so sorry," said the woman's voice, hesitant and trembling. "I just… I just had to call…"

"How dare you," Mikhail barked at the netscreen. "Five years without a word, and now, out of the blue… What the hell do you want from us?"

As it turned out, Mother wanted money.

That was one of the few scraps of information which Kalinka was able to gather within the next several minutes of jostling with Papa for a turn to talk to Mother. The questions flew out of her. Where was Mother now? _In Moscow._ And why wasn't she at home? _Because she'd been a bad Mother_. Well, was she _ever_ going to come home? _No, she wasn't_. But couldn't Kalinka at least see her? Couldn't she come to visit her? _No, she couldn't._ And did Mother realize how much it had freaking sucked for Kalinka to spend five years without her?

"Language, Kalinka," Papa said between gritted teeth.

Right. Did Mother realize how very, very horrible it had been for Kalinka to spend five years without her?

No answer. Just a bunch of stupid sobbing.

Kalinka saved one especially important question for Papa, after Mother had cut the call.

"Why did you tell me she was dead?"

Papa, looking at the floor and rubbing his beard, talked and talked for a long time, but all of it was stupid, all of it was bullshit. It even seemed like Papa had chosen each stupid word just to hurt and confuse her even more.

As Papa talked, he went blurry. Then everything else went blurry.

Kalinka ran out of the lab and up the spiral staircase, with an ache rising in her throat. The landing rattled and went _clang, clang, clang_ under her feet.

Papa ran after her. _Clang, clang, clang_ went Papa's footsteps. Kalinka opened her bedroom door, ran through, slammed it shut. Locked it.

Knocking. "Kalinka…"

"I hate you!"

She didn't come out all afternoon, or even for dinner. _That_ would show Papa. Around eleven, when she couldn't hold it anymore, she snuck out to use the bathroom. All the lights were off; the Cossack Numbers had retired to the lab, and the house was quiet. No sign of Papa. Whew. When she tiptoed back to her room, she stubbed her big toe on a plate outside her door.

She sat on the floor of her room devouring the sandwich Papa had left for her. She still definitely hated Papa, but she felt kind of bad about it. Then she remembered Papa's lie, and the sandwich went blurry in her hands.

Learning she'd been lied to about Mother being dead, or learning that Mother was alive but had chosen to be far away, instead of with her: which was worse? Kalinka tossed and turned all night, wondering. She couldn't decide.

What a shitty, shitty freaking day.

But way, _way_ worse than that was the day only a week after Mother's call, when she woke up on a faded green sleeping bag in a room with a cold linoleum floor and bare grey walls.

Her head and her limbs were heavy.

After a lot of effort, she managed to push herself upright. She stared at the walls for a long while, wondering if she was dreaming. She rubbed at a sore spot on the inside of her left elbow, where she discovered a little bandage. She couldn't remember how she'd gotten it. She felt like she might throw up. How weird. She'd never been nauseous in a dream before.

As the heaviness and nausea faded, the fear set in. She realized she wasn't dreaming, and that she didn't know where she was. When she was at last able, she got up and stumbled over to the door. She tried the lever. It didn't budge.

Above the lever a tiny slit of a window, no wider than her hand, was her only view to the outside. Beyond it was a long hallway, empty and utterly unfamiliar.

She pounded the door with her fists. "Hey!" she shouted. "Somebody. I'm stuck. Help me!"

No one came.

She turned back. Next to the green sleeping bag was a stack of magazines and some brown, dog-eared old paperbacks. In one corner of the room, a shower curtain hung from a rod; behind it was a toilet, a sink, and a roll of paper. There was a two-liter bottle of water and a box of crackers in another corner.

She felt her heart pounding in her ears. She wasn't "stuck." _Someone_ had made this prison for her. _Someone_ had put her here.

"Good morning, Miss Cossack," said a voice from up above. "Well, morning for _you_ , at least."

She gasped, then she looked, and for the first time she noticed a small camera and an intercom speaker mounted on the ceiling. The voice was oddly familiar, but not in a good way.

"I know you have a lot of questions," the voice said, "so allow me to answer some of them now. I'm Dr. Albert Wily, and this is my underground lab. Perhaps you've heard of me? Anyway, I've asked your father to do me a little favor - and if he succeeds, you'll be free to go home. The task should take him… oh, a few weeks, hopefully less. Until then, you're going to stay here. One of my robots will be coming by each day to bring your meals."

She knew that voice and that name from the newscasts that had haunted her dreams. Dr. Wily was a madman. He'd used robots to _kill_ people.

"N… no," Kalinka said. "Let me go _now._ Please…"

 _Beep_ went the sound of the line being cut, and the room was plunged into silence.

She sank to the floor and hugged her knees. _Papa_. She wanted Papa.

Within only a few hours, she'd exhausted every possible idea for escape and found them all wanting. She _definitely_ wasn't going to try slipping past the Wily-bot that brought her dinner - too scary. She'd paced the room a hundred times, hurled the paperbacks at the wall, and kicked the door.

There was nothing left for her to do but to retreat into her mind.

She wasn't a prisoner in Dr. Wily's lab. She was a princess and this was her castle. _That_ wasn't a sleeping bag, but a four-post canopy bed with satin sheets. The walls weren't bare, but covered in colorful tapestries made by the most highly skilled weavers in the kingdom. She saw minstrels, stags, unicorns. She wasn't wearing pajamas, but a pink gown made of the finest silk. So what if she couldn't leave her boudoir because the castle was being besieged by trolls? Her father, the bravest knight to ever live, was riding on a galloping white horse to her rescue this very moment. And once he'd slayed every last monster, he would pardon her mother, the noble Queen of a distant land, and welcome her back from her years of exile. They would all live happily...

A mechanical shudder in the hallway snapped her rudely out of her daydream. The lights through the tiny slit of her window went out one by one. Then hers went out too. She was in pitch darkness.

She screamed all night.

In her thirteen years, Kalinka had seen her share of shitty days. But today… _today_ took the freaking cake.

With her chin in her hands, she glared down at the schematics Dr. Light had sent her, willing those numbers and squiggly lines to make sense.

 _He's gonna know I'm lying._

Her face was hot. She looked up at her clock on the wall. 1:12 a.m. Her stomach started doing somersaults. Blues was going to visit soon… if he was going to visit at all.

Oh, God, she hoped he would. She wanted to see him. But if he came to visit, she'd have to see him ill. Dying. And she'd have to tell him a bald-faced lie.

She _hated_ lies, especially the one Papa had told her about Mother.

And Blues _trusted_ her. She was, as far as she knew, the _only_ person he trusted. If she lied to him, and if he knew it, she'd rob him of his only friend. He'd go away, and she didn't want him to go away.

She almost wished Blues _wouldn't_ come.

 _No, no_. Because if he didn't come, his core would kill him. It could kill him any minute now.

 _Hurry up, hurry up_.

Her hands were trembling. She reached out and grabbed Blues's replacement core. It was cool to the touch. She pulled it close to her. Hugged it. It was beautiful. Inside this core was Blues's entire future: many happy years. If he never trusted her again after this operation, she wouldn't care, as long as he was _alive_.

She tried to imagine how Blues had felt the day he blasted through the door of her cell and spirited her away to Papa. Made a sudden break with Wily, put his own life on the line. Had he been frightened? If so, it hadn't stopped him.

 _Oh, Blues… you're so_ good.

She'd be strong like _that_. She'd have to be.

And then in her dresser mirror she saw a familiar flash of light.


	3. Thomas

The transition from the autodrive lane onto Cossack's dirt road was a real pain in the ass. Because _potholes_. How could that uptight Cossack, who always wore socks that matched the color of his tie, tolerate those gargantuan potholes?

 _Think, Tom,_ thought Tom the moment before a dip of his front left tire reverse-bungee-jumped his stomach into his throat.

The answer came to him as it always did, as the last domino standing in a line of toppled possibilities. The toppling came first: _not that, therefore also not that, and not that, or that._ Then the last domino stood, tall and conspicuous: _Ah. Because Cossack almost never leaves his compound, that's why._

Explanations usually put Tom at ease, but not this one. The potholes were slowing him down, just as he was almost there. When he couldn't endure the wait any longer.

His palms on the wheel were sweaty, and his foot on the gas trembled. He was in no condition to focus on the road. Because Cossack had his boy.

Cossack had _Blues_ , and was going to give him back.

No. Not _give back_. Inaccurate. _Let go_. Yes. Blues wasn't Tom's; Blues could not be "given back." Tom had received that message again loud and clear the night Cossack had called to announce that "The White Lie" had worked. _I want to live, but I don't want anything to do with you._

Tom let out a trembling sigh. _That's all right, Blues. Just live. That's enough._

Wasn't it?

It would have to be. At least for now.

Because the "White Lie" plan was much more than the operation which was going to save Blues's life. Its success depended also on preserving the illusion that Tom had never been a part of it. Wasn't now swerving to avoid potholes after a sleepless night. Hadn't run out of the house at one a.m. after Cossack's call. Hadn't jumped onto the first available flight to Sakhalin. Hadn't worn a bowler hat _and_ a pince-nez to the airport to disguise himself from journalists and techie bloggers intent on following his every public appearance. (Did Blues even look at the internet, ever? Maybe. Best not to take any chances. So, pince-nez it was.)

Okay. Perhaps the pince-nez had been a bit much.

Where was he? Oh, yes. "The White Lie" depended on preserving the illusion that Tom was not going to be the one to replace Blues's…

Now, wait just a minute. Something was wrong with that idea, something he hadn't noticed before. A domino was about to topple. But what? It bothered him. He felt his pulse quickening. _Think, Tom_...

And then something large and brown came flying out from the trees and stopped right in front of the car.

 _Move, move!..._

The thing didn't move.

Tom slammed on the brakes, went hurtling forward into the steering wheel, then whipped back against his seat.

When he opened his eyes, the buck in his headlights was staring at him with a dazed look, pupils shining red. After a few tense silent seconds of mutual regard, the creature raised its great antlers and dashed off into the darkness.

Tom let his arms relax and took a deep breath, feeling his heart pounding behind his ears. _God dammit_. Another delay. Blues, whether he knew it or not, was waiting on him.

He stopped the car, leaned back in his seat, and let his hands come to rest in his lap. He took a deep breath.

"Thomas X. Light," he said, "feelings: disengage."

As a child, Tom had learned not to trust his feelings. They often seemed to sneak up on him when he least expected, and they made him explode with excitement, or anger, or grief, or whatever the hell it was. Sometimes he didn't even _know_ which emotion it was, or what had roused it in the first place, only that it drove his brain to moments of distraction or incompetence and muddied up results. Like this near-collision with the deer, for instance.

What a relief it was each time to feel those emotions subside at last, and then to go back to the comfortable baseline state of feeling very little at all.

Tom had to get hold of the feelings swirling inside of him. So he closed his eyes and did what he usually did whenever he needed to relax. In his mind's eye he envisioned a string of source code, massively complex, yet elegant, snaking upward fully-formed out of the top of his head and into the starry sky, out into the universe.

Blues's source code.

That Blues had spent much of his existence unhappy was _incidental_ to the soothing perfection of that code in moments like these. The code, all by itself, was beautiful, a thing of awe: invincible to Tom's mistakes, Albert's cruelty, and the vicissitudes of life. Just a few moments of contemplating the code was enough to bring Tom back to his senses.

He felt better. And he remembered that he ought to call home.

Roll's face peered out at him from the dashboard netscreen. "You're not _driving_ now, Dr. Light, are you?" she said by way of greeting. "You know you shouldn't drive distracted."

"Not to worry," he said with a tired smile. "I've stopped. I just wanted to let you know I've almost arrived at the Cossacks.'"

"Okay, good."

Tom sat up a little in his seat. "By the way, Roll," he said, "why do deer freeze in headlights? Why don't they just flee?" He craved an explanation for what had just happened, and knew that Roll's collection of stored facts was more eclectic than his own.

"Why do you want to know?" she asked, her voice tinged with a slight tone of renewed concern. "You almost crashed into a deer, didn't you?"

Crap.

"Well, it's because the headlights blind them. At night, once their eyes have adjusted to seeing in the dark, it takes a while for them to switch back to seeing in bright conditions. They don't flee in time, because they can't see _where to flee to_."

Tom nodded. "Right. Thanks."

"You're welcome. And be _careful_. Now go hit it out of the park. Er… not the deer, I mean."

"Got it."

Roll with her mild self-effacing smirk disappeared and the netscreen went black.

The _it_ which Tom was going to _hit out of the park_ was, of course, Blues's core replacement. Tom smiled. Roll was easy for him to understand. Rock, too. Blues, however…

Before he'd almost hit the deer, he'd been thinking about "The White Lie" plan. The plan had worked, but Tom now realized he'd had the rationale all wrong. Blues _had to know_ that Tom would be the one to replace his core. And Tom knew this because Blues, early in his life, had listened to a long and painful series of talks between himself and Albert about the operation being such a monumental task that only one of Blues's creators could ever hope to get it right. Tom had forgotten about those conversations until just now, but Blues would not have forgotten.

Blues _had to know_ it would be Tom. And if he knew, and agreed to the procedure anyway… well, that meant...

The domino _Blues doesn't trust me_ toppled over.

Oh. This changed everything, didn't it? Tom drew in a sharp breath.

 _Blues trusts me._

Fireworks and cannon blasts exploded in Tom's brain. He looked down, and saw his white-knuckled hands squeezing the steering wheel.

 _Blues trusts me. But..._

But Blues hadn't been able to come directly to Tom for help. Why not?

A new mystery. _Think, Tom..._

No. Later. He had to get to the Cossacks', had to get to Blues…

He turned the key in the ignition and he was off again. Dawn was breaking through the canopy of trees over the dirt road; he turned off his headlights and focused single-mindedly on avoiding the remaining potholes. Within minutes he emerged, parked the car hurriedly at the side of Cossack's house, and bounded toward the door.

The door flew open before he even reached it, a flash of copper came at him, and in the next instant Kalinka had thrown her arms around his middle.

"Oh, thank you," she said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thaaaaank youuuuuu…."

He returned her hug, dazed but happy. "Kalinka, you're the one who made it possible."

" _Steampunk_ , Light?" said Cossack, and tugged at the strap of Tom's pince-nez with a quizzical stare.

"Huh?" Tom reached up and discovered the pince-nez still resting on his nose. "Oh, this?" He tucked the thing into his shirt pocket. His cheeks went hot. Roll should have told him. Noticing it during their netscreen chat but not mentioning it to him would indeed be her idea of a joke… then again, there was also a chance that she hadn't noticed it at all. Like him, she sometimes failed to see things that were right in front of her nose.

Then he chuckled to himself, remembering that he'd just deduced the pince-nez had been unnecessary all along. _Blues trusts me._

"Well, come in," said Cossack. "Of course, you can have a rest if you like… or coffee…"

"No," said Tom. "Just take me to my son."

Tom was barely aware of his feet walking through the house, what corridor they'd turned down, and which door they'd stopped in front of. Whether they were upstairs or downstairs. Whether he, Cossack, and Kalinka had spoken or not. Now the door was opening before Tom, now a shock of panic made Tom tremble-how unprepared he was!-and now…

A quiet room. Kalinka's tidy bed under the window. A patch of sunlight spread across the bed, and within the patch of sunlight, Blues, asleep. Blues, in his plain clothes, armorless, bare-faced, for the first time Tom had seen in years.

How long had it been? Ten years. Ten! How had Tom survived those ten years?

He crept toward the figure on the bed-for some reason, he felt he ought to be silent. His knees buckled under him, and slowly he sank into a chair... Where had the chair come from? Cossack was standing behind him with a look saying, _don't mention it_. Ah, you're a good man, Cossack.

Blues looked so _small_. Why was Tom surprised?

He looked back. Kalinka was looking at him, smiling through tears. In that moment Tom loved her. He hadn't expressed his gratitude properly.

"Kalinka, I…"

"Yes, Dr. Light?"

"I… can't thank you enough… for being Blues's friend."

She nodded. Tom turned away-it was enough-he didn't have the strength just now for more words.

When Blues had first made his break with Albert years ago, Tom had busied himself with cheerful preparations for his homecoming: the upright Bosendorfer he bought to entice him, and his insistence that Rock and Roll share a room so that Blues could have his old bedroom back—or, at least, insofar as the house was similar to the one Blues had burned to the ground, the closest approximation to it.

But the Bosendorfer—beside which Tom had sat for hours with a glazed look wondering which piece Blues would play on it first—still languished under a layer of dust, and the reclaimed bedroom, formerly Rock's, remained an empty echo chamber.

Instead of the opportunity to welcome Blues home, what Tom got was "the Dance."

"The Dance" was the set of unspoken rules Tom had to follow on the rare occasions Blues came around. Absolutely no asking Blues about his feelings. No inviting Blues into the house: he wouldn't step foot inside. No attempts to come near him: three meters was the acceptable minimum distance, although recently (progress!) it had decreased to about two and a half. Whenever Tom by chance took one step forward, Blues took one step back. And if Tom flagrantly broke any of the rules, Blues would simply disappear.

But there would be no "dance" today. Tom pulled his chair closer and craned his head over the body—reduced the distance between himself and Blues to nearly zero-and the body, inert and unaware, remained where it was. _I'm here to save your life whether you like it or not. And damn your rules… I'm not sorry for what I'm about to do._

Tom reached down and clasped the hand in his. He half-expected it to jerk itself away, but it didn't. He squeezed. He let go, caressed the palm with his thumb, and ran his fingers over the artificial veins and bones in the wrist. Then he picked the hand up, held it close to his face, and with fondness looked over the fingerprints, the loops and arches he'd sculpted years ago one line at a time.

He moved up to the face. The cheeks were slightly pink, an evocation of innocent and carefree boyhood. With gently closed eyes and a blank expression, the face looked as innocent as it had the morning before Blues's activation—no visible record of a lifetime of disappointment and fear. Tom cupped one of the cheeks in his right hand. He placed his other hand on the forehead, and ran his fingers through the black hair. There were 111,478 strands of it—he could still remember the exact number—most of which he'd painstakingly attached by hand.

He blinked back a few tears. _My boy..._

He was aware of Kalinka and Cossack watching him, and he cleared his throat. "I need a few moments to… You know… It's been a long time..." They nodded without comment.

Then Tom's blood boiled at the sight of the inside of Blues's left arm, which from elbow to wrist was marred by a jagged, flesh-colored scar. A permanent remnant of Albert's outfitting of the buster which weaponized Blues, it meant that Albert either hadn't bothered, or hadn't been able to figure out how, to boot up Blues's self-repair subroutine while he was in sleep mode—leaving Blues to do it himself, too late, when he woke.

 _Shoddy work, Albert... you pissant, amateur..._

He knew that once he'd opened Blues up, he would see the cylindrical conversion unit, squeezed crudely between Blues's "lungs," which allowed Blues to transfigure into his fighting form. On Rock the unit was a symbol of courage and free will, but on Blues, who'd only ever wanted to be left alone, its existence was oppressive, ugly, a tremendous burden on a power core already strained beyond its capacity. Tom had half a mind to take it out today, if only because it was Albert's… but he stopped himself from carrying the thought any farther. Although Blues had never asked for it, he surely wouldn't want it removed now.

In the first few years after it had been imbued with life, this little body had been transported to places it didn't want to go, poked and prodded, frozen, starved, and hunted to exhaustion. The brightest business minds of the decade filled boardrooms to discuss how best to replicate it and profit from it. Later, under Albert's yoke, it was modified without consent, struck, shot at, and threatened with increasing violence. And all the while, it was tortured from within by that damned core flaw.

But enough of that. It was time to get to work. With slightly shaking fingers he unbuttoned the grey shirt from top to bottom, and pushed the two halves apart. He placed his hands on the chest. It was cold. There was no pulse, nor any gentle rise and fall of expanding and contracting lungs—but of course Tom knew better. There was life inside, dormant, waiting. He took a deep breath.

 _Blues, why couldn't you face me today?_ Tom was troubled, more troubled than he had felt for a long time. _I know you trust me. You've saved Rock more times than I can remember. You've saved Kalinka. You've saved me. You've done good. I'm proud of you, very proud. We all are. Why so secretive, then? You've got nothing to be ashamed of…_

Suddenly Thomas leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. He felt his brow tie itself in knots; his heart was thumping in his chest.

Was _that_ it? Was Blues _ashamed_ of something?

What reason did he have to suspect that Blues was ashamed? This wasn't how Tom usually arrived at his ideas. There were no dominos to topple over, no evidence, only a _feeling_ which he wasn't sure he could trust.

He looked at the face again. It was damnably serene. Blues was so inscrutable that he didn't even need a mask in order to hide himself. Well, was he concealing a secret in there? Tom had long ago accepted the fact that his creations were separate from him, but he couldn't suppress the thought that since Blues was his invention, the fruit of his life's toil, he ought at least to have _some_ clue what made him tick. But here he had to concede defeat. He had nothing, nothing except that odd persistent _feeling_...

For the next eighteen hours, Tom worked. He neither ate nor slept. His eyes burned with exhaustion. Once in a while he glanced at the face half-hoping it would look different from before, would do _something_ help him to understand... but it didn't. He was blind in this new world of feelings and hunches; he felt his impairment more and more keenly. As Tom worked, he tried very hard to bask in his triumph: at last he was replacing Blues's power core, and the operation was going well. Blues would live. This was a happy day.

Meanwhile, he remained troubled at heart, and the face refused to give up its secrets.


End file.
